Page 77 of Find Me

I glanced at the four of them sitting around the table watching me. “If I told him the truth, he’d have me relocated with a new identity by morning. I don’t want to uproot my life again.”

“I told you we won’t say anything,” Colt said.

I moved over to the table and sat in my chair between the twins. “My uncle won’t care. To him, my safety is compromised, and he’ll make it his top priority to get me somewhere safe. I wouldn’t put it past him to put me in handcuffs and drag me all the way to the next location of his choosing if I tried to protest.”

They went quiet and exchanged looks.

I sighed. “You might as well ask what you want to know. It’s not like I can take back this morning.”

“Why do you have a second phone?” Creed asked.

“It’s a prepaid burner and harder to trace,” I answered. “My uncle calls me on my personal phone from a secure line once a week so we can catch up.”

“Why isn’t he here with you?” Keelan asked.

“Because he was asked to help find Mr. X.”

“That’s who killed your family?” Knox asked bluntly.

I nodded, leaning back in my chair. I knew I was going to have to tell them everything or we’d be here all night and I really wanted to just get this over with. “Mr. X was my freshman English teacher,” I said. “At first he acted like a regular teacher. I couldn’t tell you when things changed, but I started noticing him watching me, even when I wasn’t in his class at the time. Then the staring turned into innocent or accidental touches, like putting his hand on my shoulder, rubbing my back, or bumping into me so that he could hold me close. In my gut, I knew it was intentional and something wasn’t right. I tried talking to Shayla about it. She laughed it off and made me feel stupid. I started doubting myself after that and because of that doubt, I agreed to stay after class one day when Mr. X asked me to.” I took a deep breath to steel my nerves. “He tried to rape me on his desk.” I saw all of them go still and I thought I saw Knox’s hand squeeze into a fist before he lifted it off the table and set it in his lap. “I begged him to stop and to let me go. He thought I was playing hard to get. He was convinced that I wanted him just as much as he wanted me. The school principal walked in as he was about to…”

Colt scooted closer and grabbed my hand.

I continued on. “She screamed at him to let me go. He refused. Instead, he went on and on about how we loved each other and what he was doing was consensual. The more he talked, it was obvious that he was crazy, and I was so grateful that she thought so, too.

“She tried to call the police on her cell phone. He let go of me to stop her. He hit her, knocking the phone out of her hand. I took that opportunity to get away. As soon as I was out of the classroom, I started screaming at the top of my lungs for help. Teachers came out of their classrooms to help us. But by that point, Mr. X had run. Police searched for him at his home and found a shrine of me in his bedroom, but no sign of Mr. X. He had disappeared and no one could find him.

“A few months later, I received a letter from him in the mail. It was a love letter and inside it was a picture of me sitting in a movie theater with my friends. It had been taken from a few rows away. After that, more letters and pictures consistently came every couple of weeks and in between those, I’d receive texts telling me how much he missed me and video messages of him touching himself. No matter how many times I changed my number, he’d find out what the new one was.

“I did my best to ignore it and continue living my life like normal. I held out for about a year until I couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped hanging out with friends and leaving the house unless it was for school. I was terrified all the time. I could never shake the feeling of being watched or stop wondering each time I left the house if that was the day he was going to get me. It was like the world had become so small and there was nothing I could do, nowhere I could go to escape him. It was suffocating.”

“You felt helpless,” Keelan said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes I would hide in my closet and I would tell myself that if he couldn’t see me, he couldn’t get me. That was somewhat true, and it pissed Mr. X off. When I stopped going out as much, he escalated things. He broke into our house while my sister and I were at school and my parents were at work. He stole all of my panties and a few other things, like my hairbrush and a teddy bear my dad had won for me at the fair when I was eight. He left rose petals all over my bed, along with some rope, a vibrator, and a letter with explicit instructions on what to do with the vibrator. The letter also explained that the rope was a sneak peek of what he was going to do to me when it was time for us to be together. I wish I could say that the upside was that I eventually got all my panties back.” A disgusted shiver ripped through me. “He sent them back to me one at a time after he…pleasured himself with them.”

They all reacted with disgust. Creed cursed. Keelan shook his head. Colt and Knox were glaring at the table.

“Did your family ever consider moving?” Keelan asked.

“Logan suggested we move to Texas to be closer to him after Mr. X broke in, but my parents didn’t want to move. My mom had finally achieved her dream of owning her own restaurant. My dad had just made partner at his law firm. They would have had to give up so much to move and if we did move, there was still a chance Mr. X might follow us and then it would have all been for nothing.”

“This went on for years?” Creed asked.

“It stopped for a couple of months after our last family trip during spring break, my junior year. I had been so depressed. I was barely getting out of bed. Our parents woke Shayla and me up in the middle of the night and snuck us away to Texas to visit Logan. It was the best week I’d had in the longest time. We spent pretty much every day at the beach. It’s where that picture I showed you of Shayla and me was taken.”

They all nodded, remembering.

“After we returned from Texas, we didn’t hear from Mr. X for a few months. Then one afternoon my dad found a DVD with a note taped to his car window outside his work. The DVD had a video of me changing my clothes in my bedroom on it and the note was a threat. If my dad ever took me away again, Mr. X would kill him and my mom. My dad came home stumbling drunk that night and my parents argued about what to do.

“Seeing how happy we’d been in Texas and receiving a threatening note from Mr. X seemed to change their perspective on things, or it was their breaking point. I’m not sure, but they were considering moving. Not to Texas, though. My parents and Logan figured that if we were going to move, we had to do it in a way that would make it hard for Mr. X to follow us. Logan came up with a plan to spirit us away, get us set up in a small town with different names. The only issue was that Shayla wasn’t on board.

“Despite what had been going on with me, she had the perfect life. She was popular, had a bunch of friends, was on track to be the captain of the cheerleading squad. Moving was her worst nightmare. Little did I know at the time, she complained about it out in the open with her friends and that was how Mr. X found out. Which brings us to the night he killed them.” I trailed off.

Staring at the empty plate on the table in front of me, my mind wandered back to that night. For over a year, I had done my best to evade the memories from that night. Now, I was about to take a stroll through them.

Colt squeezed my hand. I felt so much support with such a small gesture. “In the few months Mr. X had left us alone, I had reconnected with a friend. That day, I went over to her house right after school to hang out. I didn’t get home until a little after nine. I knew something wasn’t right the moment I walked through the door. All the lights were off and it was too quiet. I went into the living room when I saw that the TV was on but muted. I found my dad on the couch. With the light coming off the TV I could see all the blood on his…” With my free hand I gestured to my whole torso. “I tried to convince myself that it was dark and I was seeing things. So I flicked on the lamp.” I squeezed my eyes shut as if to hide my eyes from seeing that image again. Panic was quickly growing in my chest. “I can’t.” Squeezing Colt’s hand, I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Creed put his hand on my thigh. “It’s okay, Shi, you don’t have to.”